Review: PGA Tour 2K23
| Author: | Brian Powell Jr |
| Date: | December 24, 2022 3:21:00 pm EST |
| Last Updated: | June 1, 2024 9:01:59 pm EDT |
| Read Time: | 5 min read |
| Tags: |
Game Details
| Genre | Developer | Publisher | Release Date | Reviewer's Sentiments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sports | HB Studios | 2K | 2022-10-13 | Neutral |
Initial Impressions
PGA Tour 2K23, developed by HB Studios and published by 2K, makes a strong use case for the Unity engine. Many people will say that Unity doesn’t produce anything of quality like say the Unreal engine, but my stance has always been that the tool is only as good as the person using it. Jumping into PGA Tour 2K23, it reminds me of other 2K Games sports titles with a sleek interface and many menus. The game wastes no time and immediately starts you off learning the basics of the game controlling Tiger Woods at the driving range. Here they introduce the option to either play with the True Swing or 3-Click Swing method. Visually, the game is stunning and the level of detail put into the courses shows you it’s not some generic golf game like Hot Shots! Golf and Mario Golf. To that end, it doesn’t have an arcade-y feel to the gameplay, but more on that further down.
A Few Clubs Short of a Full Bag
Player Development
Player development is rather lacking in PGA Tour 2K23. Right out the gate, your newly minted character is able to drive the ball 300+ yards (depending on conditions and bounce). Instead of using the regular performance scaling system you find in other 2K sports titles, this game does away with stat points and replaces it with club-specific skills, club and ball modifiers, and player archetypes.
Every golfer in the game is forced into one of five general archetypes that affect various aspects of the golfer’s performance. Further down, your golfer earns a skill point for each level gained with the max player level being 50. These skill points are used to unlock performance boosts that are active under certain conditions and with certain clubs. For example, I can get a power boost on irons hitting from the rough, but it deactivates if I make par. The final level of player customization is using fittings to fine tune your clubs to your playstyle. The fittings are earned after each round of golf played and have varying degrees of quality that impact the performance boosts/impacts.
Gameplay
PGA Tour 2K23 comes with a variety of assists and settings so that you can set the game up to your liking. Many of these assists show you exactly how the ball will travel if you hit the right shot. This allows you to essentially always make the perfect shot. I turned the majority of all that off because what’s the point in playing the game if it’s not challenging. Even playing the game on normal difficulty with most of these assists turned off you have to beat unrealistic player performances. For example, on Normal difficulty you’re expected to shoot 6 to 8 under par for each round. Most four round tournaments finish with the pros shooting around 12 under par at best. What ends up happening here is that when I would play a four round tournament I needed to score 30 below par to win. Yes, you read that correctly and I wish I was joking. The video below from a Let’s Play I put together shows you how the game plays on Normal. More Let’s Plays can be found on our YouTube Channel or on our Let’s Play Videos page.
Another irritation in regards to the gameplay is the lack of a difficulty curve when transitioning between leagues. I started my player’s career in Q-School where I progressed to the Korn Ferry Tour. The Q-School, or professional qualifier, was only one round on one course so I’ll gloss over that. Once you progress up from the Korn Ferry Tour to the PGA Tour you would assume the player difficulty would get harder. Spoilers: it doesn’t. The rest of the field of players is dictated by your difficulty setting so once you master Normal you’re pretty much going to keep winning unless you choke. This was made evident by my winning of the first 3 PGA Tour tournaments.
The hardest part of the game to get down is the putting. You’re given a grid that shows you the slope of the putting surface; however, I found that the degree of break didn’t match the speed of the dots moving along the grid. There were also instances where I had a flat/level putting line and the ball would still break left or right slightly.
Mechanically, I found using the True Swing method to not work right on my mouse. I’m not sure if it’s a dpi-related issue and the game wasn’t registering the motions correctly or if I wasn’t sliding the mouse fast enough. Either way, after I flubbed up Tiger Woods’ drives in the tutorial so many times where he’d only hit the ball 50 yards I opted to use the 3-Click Swing method. Once you master the cadence, the golfing gets pretty easy. It’s entirely possible that the reason I’m having such an easy go at this is because of the 3-click system, but without investing a bunch of time into figuring out why my mouse swings weren’t working this was the only way I could play the game.
Minor Irritations
I wasn’t a huge fan of the use of a “battlepass”/”season pass” system, but it only gives out cosmetics to be the people who buy it. Performance items are available to everyone on the free route.
Final Thoughts
If you enjoy playing sports games, then you’ll find a place for PGA Tour 2K23 in your collection. For me, on the other hand, I found the game to fall short of what I’d expect from a 2K sports title. I was expecting deeper character growth/development in the form of allocating stat points. Instead what we got was an ARPG approach where your gear makes the class (archetype) better. The scourge of the season pass model that plagues AAA titles also detracts from my personal enjoyment. I enjoy playing the game for what it is, but it’s not what I was wanting from a 2K sports title.